Friday, 30 October 2009

Fidelity, after long practice, toThe things that have crossed one's path in life,Moves one to find "history" in a morning, A moonlit night, a transitory patchOf sun upon grass, the turning of a cat's Sleek head over its shoulder to look backInto one's eyes, a lifelong lover's touch,The memory of the shy sweet sidelongSmile of a friend one may not see againIn "this life"--these things define home To one now that one lives largely in one's mind--As though there had ever been any otherPlace--once born, once having existed--In which to somehow locate a world

Because brief hours before fadeout life becomes

A late awakening, much as one assumesIs the experience of "lost" generationsWhose youth is turned back toward childhood byDreams; just so one's own dim youth now at last Appears a kind of slumber from which the slowProcess of waking took a half centuryOr so, as time now opens up its eyes,Yawns, stretches, struggles in dark to discoverWhere it is among whirling things, places, years. But of course one will never fully emergeFrom this fog, nor in one's heart wish to do so,For mere excursions don't suffice on visitsTo dead cities--excavation too's required,Cries out the hungry unborn poem Within us, demanding to exist asIf alive

You see, I can not pick one part that pleases my inner core, more than another.This is something I could and would want to read again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. Oh.....and again. Mainly because I am liking the feeling your words stir inside of me.

I'm haunted sometimes by the idea that the words we need are down there inside and all we need is to keep digging, in the several senses of the term, no matter how exhausting or tiresome or painful... but of course it's so much easier just to skate along on the surface. When down there the hungry unborn poem is crying out like those miners trapped in a tunnel by an explosion, in a movie I saw as a child. They sang a nonsense song which I will sing for you right now (fortunately for you, you will not hear it). The point of singing it was to keep up morale, not because they thought somebody heard it and the excavation would get to them. My guess is that 99% of our songs and stories just stay forever trapped and buried down there, singing their brave and hopeless nonsense until the breath runs out.